Concerning Sally Part 4

"Charlie," she called, "you be a saurus something."

"Don't _want_ to be a--Sally, what's a--that thing that you said for me to be? What is it?"

"Well," replied Sally slowly, "it's an animal kind of like an alligator--and such things, you know. I guess I'm one. And Charlie, you can't talk. Animals--especially sauruses--_never_ talked."

"Parrots can," returned Charlie sullenly.

Sally did not think it worth while to try to answer this objection.

"There wasn't any kind of a thing, millions of years ago, that could talk," she said calmly, "so, of course, they couldn't learn."

"Then you can't talk, either," said Charlie, in triumph. And he subsided and returned to the eating of crackers, of which, as everybody knows, the saurians were extremely fond.

Sally, meanwhile, was enjoying the prospect of treetops; an unbroken prospect of treetops, except for a swamp which, in historic times, became their own little valley.

Sally had ceased, for the moment, her flitting lightly from bough to bough, and there was no sign of her presence; and Charlie had come to the end of his crackers and was browsing around in the gra.s.s, picking up a crumb here and there.

"h.e.l.lo!" said a strange voice; a strange voice, but a very pleasant one. "As I'm a living sinner, if here isn't a little pony!"

Charlie looked up into the eyes of a very serious young man. The eyes were twinkling over the wall and through the gap in the trees. Charlie decided not to be frightened. But he shook his head. He wasn't a pony.

"Well, well, of course not," the voice went on. "I was rather hasty, but it looked like a pony, at the first glance. I guess it's a fierce bull."

Charlie shook his head again, less positively. Now that it had been suggested, he yearned to be a fierce bull. He wished that he had thought of it before he shook his head.

"A camel?" asked the young man. "Can it be a camel?"

Once more Charlie shook his head, and he laughed.

"It sounds like a hyena," remarked the stranger solemnly, "but it can't be, for hyenas eat--" He put his hand to his forehead and seemed to be puzzling it out. "Aha!" he cried at last. "I have it. A giraffe!"

"No!" Charlie shouted. "I'm _aren't_ a giraffe. I'm a saw-horse."

And he straddled his legs far apart and his arms far apart, and he looked as much like a saw-horse as he could. That isn't saying much.

At this last announcement of Charlie's, Sally exploded in a series of chuckles so sudden and so violent that she almost fell out of the tree.

An answering t.i.tter came from the other side of the wall and a pair of hands appeared, trying for a hold on the top stones; then the head of a very pretty little girl followed, until her chin was on a level with the top of the wall and she could look over it into Charlie's eyes.

The strange young man had looked up into the tree. "h.e.l.lo!" he exclaimed. "If there isn't another! Is that a saw-horse, too?"

Charlie had considered himself the person addressed. "Yes," he replied, "it is. It's a flying one."

"Mercy on us!" cried the young man. "A flying saw-horse! What a lot of saw-horses you have about here; very interesting ones, too."

"Yes," said Charlie importantly, "we like to be 'em."

"It must be most exciting to be so extraordinary a thing. Do you suppose you could get that flying one to come down where we can see it? Do you know, I never have seen a flying saw-horse in all the nineteen years that I have lived."

"She won't come down unless she wants to," Charlie grumbled.

Sally was recovering, in a measure, from her fit of chuckling. She leaned far forward, below the screen of leaves.

"Oh, yes, I will," she called, in a low, clear voice. "Besides, I want to. Charlie was mistaken about the saw-horse. He meant saurus. And I was a flying lizard and this was a coal tree. From the top of the tree you can't see anything but treetops and swamps. It's millions of years ago, you know. And father's got the skeleton of this very lizard up in his room, and he said that it used to fly right up in the topmost branches of the coal trees and he told me about the sauruses that used to be." She had dropped to the ground. "Oh, it's very interesting."

"It must be," the young man smilingly replied; "and I should suppose that it must be rather interesting for your father to have such a pupil."

"It isn't," Sally returned. "That is--father only told me those things the other day."

The young man laughed. "I guess you must be Professor Ladue's little girl."

"Yes," said Sally, "we are. That is, I am, and this is my brother Charlie."

"The only and original saw-horse. You, I suppose, were a--we'll call it a gynesaurus--"

Sally clapped her hands and gave a little laugh of delight.

"And this," he continued, laying his hand affectionately upon the small head beside him, "is my small sister, Henrietta Sanderson, who would be happy to be any kind of a beast that you tell her about. She is ten years old and she dotes on being strange beasts."

"Oh," cried Sally, "and I'm ten years old, too. Would Henrietta like to come over the wall now? There's a gate farther along."

"Henrietta despises gates. But does your invitation include her brother? I'm Fox Sanderson and I was on my way to see your father."

"Father isn't at home to-day," said Sally; "and, if you could come over, too--"

At that, Fox Sanderson put his hands on the top of the wall and vaulted lightly over. He turned to help Henrietta.

"Now," he said, when she was safely on the right side, "here we all are. What'll we do?"

Henrietta had her brother's hand. "Fox tells lovely stories," she remarked.

"Does he?" asked Sally. "What about?"

"About any kind of a thing that you ask him," answered Henrietta.

"About sauruses?" Sally asked eagerly, turning to him.

"All right," he agreed, smiling; "about sauruses. But I'm afraid it's just a little too cold for you youngsters to sit still and listen to stories. I'll have to keep you moving a bit."

Sally told her mother about it that night. She thought that she never had had such a good time in all her life. Fox Sanderson! Well, he told the most wonderful stories that ever were.

"And, mother," said Sally, all interest, "he had me be a gynesaurus and Henrietta was a---- But what are you laughing at?"

For Mrs. Ladue had burst out laughing. "My dear little girl!" she cried softly. "My dear little girl! A gynesaurus! This Fox Sanderson must be interesting, indeed."

"Then I can play with Henrietta? And father wouldn't mind, do you think? And your head can't be hurting, mother, because you just laughed right out."